Latin American Music

Latin American music is the umbrella for the musics of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking America, formed over five centuries from the meeting of Iberian, Indigenous and West African traditions. Within it sit distinct regional systems, son cubano, tango, bossa nova, samba, cumbia, mariachi, Andean folk and nueva cancion among them, each with its own instruments, dances and social worlds, yet linked by shared languages, Catholic and Afro-diasporic ritual calendars, and circuits of migration and media. The category functions less as a single style than as a continental frame, gathering figures as different as *Astor Piazzolla*, *Joao Gilberto*, *Violeta Parra* and *Celia Cruz* into one field of exchange.